


"To the makers of music — all worlds, all times"

by jadelennox



Category: Space Vehicles
Genre: Gen, IN SPACE!, SCIENCE!, Science, Space Flight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadelennox/pseuds/jadelennox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You'd like to think the magnetic highway is the open road: a '67 Camaro with the top down, <i>Quadrophenia</i> blasting from the speakers, wind in your hair, a gorgeous girl in the passenger seat.  But there's no Camaro out here seventeen light-hours from the nearest Exxon station. There's some fucking exciting magnetic particles, no lie, flavored like supernova. But the solar wind's died down and you can't hear Pete Townshend's voice in hard vacuum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"To the makers of music — all worlds, all times"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [finch (afinch)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afinch/gifts).



_PING._  
 _ACK._  
 _37% packet loss. round trip 6.12×107 ms_

You'd like to think the magnetic highway is the open road: a '67 Camaro with the top down, _Quadrophenia_ blasting from the speakers, wind in your hair, a gorgeous girl in the passenger seat. But there's no Camaro out here seventeen light-hours from the nearest Exxon station. There's some fucking exciting magnetic particles, no lie, flavored like supernova. But the solar wind's died down and you can't hear Pete Townshend's voice in hard vacuum.

It's been more than twenty years since you took that picture and powered down your cameras but you still think about it all the time. Out here it's pretty obvious that Ptolemy and Copernicus were small-minded but dammit you come from Earth yourself. It's hard not to be geocentric when you're 40,000 years from even seeing somebody else's neighborhood. The point of the pale blue dot, you suppose, is to show that it's a great big universe, with Earth barely a speck in its own solar system. You can't _not_ think about Earth, though. It's not like you have anyone else to talk to besides the terran monkeymen.

If you had the power for it -- or a real player instead of a drawing of one, it's like they're fricking taunting you sometimes -- you'd listen to your record. Of course you're a pretty brilliant collection of nuts and bolts so you can extrapolate what it sounds like from the record's physical structure, right? That's like listening to it. Let your dual Computer Command Subsystems coast of the hills and troughs of these mellow tones. Teach yourself to say _howdy_ in Gujarati, English, Hittite, Nguni, Mandarin, French, Oriya. Let your frustration ebb away to the tune of "Melancholy Blues", or get your ticker clocking along at just the right speed to that drum song from Senegal. Cruise along the magnetic highway like it's Route 66 and the solar wind will whip up again any second.

I'm sure you can sightread gold-plated copper.

_PING._  
 _ACK._  
 _84% packet loss. round trip 6.12×107 ms_

What would you ask _Voyager 2_ if you could talk to her? Would she tell you about Uranus and Neptune? Could she show you pictures of their moons, their rings, their gaseous atmospheres? Would you compare notes about Jupiter and Saturn? Would you find out how much the weather changed on Jupiter in the months between your visits? An umbrella wouldn't have helped with that storm, much; did _Voyager 2_ see it, too? Did she fly through Jupiter's rings, get caught in a lava flow on Io, play ice hocky on Ganymede?

By Jove, you'd love to have that conversation.

(You're forgiven for that joke. It's lonely and dull, eight years past termination shock and 40,000 from Gliese 445. You get a pass.)

You hear you and _Voyager 2_ have far more siblings in the solar system than you ever did before. Orbiters over Saturn and rovers on Mars, a radiometer cruising toward Jupiter and a gamma-ray spectrometer finding water ice on Mercury. Rumor has it there's cousins from abroad: a lander headed to Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko, a probe investigating Asteroid 4179 Toutatis. The solar system is chock full of flying science labs, and you're so early to the party you're already headed out the back door as they ring the doorbell, proffering six-packs and bowls of guacamole.

_PING._  
 _ACK._  
 _12% packet loss. round trip 6.12×107 ms_

Let's be fair, it's been twenty-two years since you felt the solar wind. Your detector stopped working long before Sol stopped pushing on you, blowing on the sails you don't have.

(They say solar sails are next. About time, you think. On Earth they forget in all the atmosphere, but out here you can feel every photon. And it seems more elegant, somehow, than plutonium-238. Very Age of Sail. You imagine those craft as buccaneers, sailing the solar system's piratical vacuum, kidnapping fair wenches and sailing in picturesque circles through the choppy waters of the Kuiper Belt.

By fair wenches you mean your sister craft.

You think being kidnapped wouldn't be such a bad fate. 40,000 years is a long time.)

Your Infrared Interferometer Spectrometer heater was disabled in 1990, though you got some nifty readings of Saturn's rings beforehand. Fourier transforms are the bomb, baby. Your Photopolarimeter System never worked, goddammit. Your Planetary Radio Astronomy Investigation only got turned off four years ago, even though you bet there'd still be interesting data in the 20 kHz-40.5 MHz radio band. Got to conserve what little power's left for the remaining instruments, though. Without power, your Triaxial Fluxgate Magnetometer – and isn't it just _groovy_ that's the real name of an instrument? It sounds like a spaceship part from some cheesy movie but no, that's part of _you_ – wouldn't be measuring the magnetic fields as you leave the heliosphere.

Sometimes you probably think, _Thank you, Thomas Johann Seebeck_. Solar sails might be more elegant but without your RTGs you'd have nobody to talk to at all, no particles to detect. You'd have had no journey at all. You might be just a few years from total silence but would you have chosen to stay home instead? _Hell,_ no.

Baby, you found _volcanoes on Io_. That kid looked like an ad for Clearasil, dig?

_PING._  
 _ACK._  
 _9% packet loss. round trip 6.12×107 ms_

At 18,490,480,355 km from Earth you still hear things on your High Gain Antenna. What the hell is a twitter account, and why do you have one?

_PING._  
 _ACK._  
 _36% packet loss. round trip 6.12×107 ms_

It's probably not something you think about much, but you completed your primary mission more than _thirty years ago_. It's .0008 of 40,000 years, sure, but even so you still think on terran timelines. Humans born in the year you explored Europa and Callisto have had children. Some have had grandchildren, although admittedly that's sketchier by 1977 Cape Canaveral standards. Tara Estlin and Ashley Stroupe were in middle school reading  A Wrinkle in Time and Danny Dunn & the Voice from Space when you were done with Saturn and Jupiter; now they drive your sisters on the surface of Mars.

From here on out it's all sprinkles on a delicious ice cream cone of exploration. Your last three decades on this Interstellar Mission – interstellar, ha! You're _40,000 years_ from a fly-by of Gliese 445 – have been delicious gravy. This amazing exploration of the heliosheath wasn't your primary objective, and that is just bizarre to consider.

Does it really make sense anymore to measure time in orbits of Earth around the sun? Then again, you're still measuring distance in astronomical units -- 123.60122686 AU from Earth and counting – and that's just silly. _Hi, I'm Voyager 1, and my distance from Earth is roughly 123.60122686 times the distance between Earth and Sol, and I've been traveling for roughly the time it takes for the Earth to orbit Sol thirty-five times._ You sure know how to be popular at space parties, kid.

_PING._  
 _ACK._  
 _36% packet loss. round trip 6.12×107 ms_

You're leaving the solar system.

You're ready.

Gliese 445, here you come.


End file.
